“Don’t concern yourself over it.”

His words stung. Keeping my face low, I bundled up the bloody towels and crusted manacles. “Catherine has the grimoire,” I said, needing to cut the tension. “It was part of a spell I was using to track Anushka, and without it, I have no idea how we’ll find her. And once they realize you are free and their plans are in shambles, I expect they’ll destroy it.” I needed to tell him what I’d discovered about my heritage – how Anushka was maintaining her immortality using the deaths of her descendants, but something stayed my tongue.

“I agree,” he replied. “We need to retrieve the book now while we have the advantage. Do you have any idea where she might be now?”

His perfunctory tone was unnerving. “Looking for me?”

“And when she realizes she can’t find you? Where would she go then?”

“Home. She lives at the rear of her shop in Pigalle.”

“Then we go there.”

Before I could say another word, the bundle in my hands pulled away and moved to the center of the room where it burst into flames. Silvery blue troll-fire, unnatural and strange in its intensity, incinerated the cloth, and the steel melted in glowing globs that dripped onto the wooden floor. Snatching up the water can, I tossed the contents over the smoking mess before a fire of the natural sort could break out.

“There was much there that could cause harm,” he said by way of explanation. “Now let us go find this Catherine before it is too late.”

Thirty-Four

Cécile

I stole a cloak from the costume room for him, and he walked next to me with the hood up to keep his otherworldliness from being recognized as we navigated the streets to Pigalle. The night air was icy and full of stars, the quarter moon bright enough that we didn’t need troll-light, though seeing him without one was as strange as me for once being the one who knew the way.

As we walked, Tristan kept glancing upward warily, almost as though he expected one of the stars to fall out of the sky and strike us where we stood. And when he was not looking upward, his attention jumped from the revelers, to the gaslights, to the horses trotting by, to the dog that barked as we passed. Anywhere but me. I felt tense with all that had remained unasked and unsaid, and I didn’t need to feel his emotions to know he felt the same.

“Don’t react, but someone is following us. Two someones.”

My stomach did flip-flops, and I only barely refrained from grabbing his arm. Who else could it be but Lord Aiden and Catherine? “What do we do?”

“Catch them. Quick, turn here.” He nudged me around a corner and into the entranceway of a building. It reeked of alcohol and urine, and even in the dim light I saw his nose wrinkle with distaste.

We waited in silence, but not for long. “I don’t see them,” a woman whispered.

“They went this way,” her companion responded. Both voices were deeply familiar to me.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Skipping around Tristan, I stepped out of the entranceway.

Sabine and Chris both jumped in surprise. “Cécile!”

“What are you two doing following me?”

“We wanted to see where he would take you.”

“More accurately, where she’s taking me.” Tristan stepped out of the shadows. “I’m afraid I’m quite at her mercy in this strange city of yours.”

Sabine clapped a hand over her mouth and Chris’s eyes bugged out. “Tristan? Is it really you?”

“None other.” His attention turned to Sabine, his curiosity apparent. “Am I correct to presume you are Mademoiselle Sabine?”

Expression wary, she nodded.

“It is a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve heard fine things about your character.”

Her jaw tightened. “I wish I could say the feeling was mutual. You aren’t what I expected.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“You know perfectly well you don’t disappoint,” she scoffed, her lip curling up with disgust. “I’d thought you’d be something I could pity, and that pity would allow me to forgive you for what you did to her. I was wrong.”

“Tristan.” Chris interrupted the exchange before it could devolve further. “Where are the rest of the trolls? How is it that you are free? What is the plan?”

“I’m uniquely privileged in my freedom,” Tristan said, his eyes flicking in my direction. “As to why and how that is the case, you’ll have to ask Cécile, as she has not yet graced me with an understanding of how it came to pass. Among other things.”

He said it with lighthearted indifference, as though the answer were of no consequence to him at all. But I knew differently, and now I knew why. His name. It was his greatest secret. The one thing he told no one, not even me. Yet somehow I knew it, and I’d used it. The complex twist of strange syllables capable of bending him to my will. And even as I knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west, I knew this would not sit well with him.

“Cécile?” It was Chris who asked the question.

“I…” A gust of wind blew across us, carrying with it the heavy smell of wood smoke. “Something’s burning.” With the wooden homes packed together as they were in Pigalle, even a small fire had the potential for disaster. But there was something more, a worry that sent prickles down my spine.

“There.” Chris pointed and our eyes went to the orange glow in the distance.